Greetings, friends,
At our recent teleconference, I agreed to post excerpts from our meeting about our team's self-assessment of "how we are doing" in terms of cultivating a partnership culture within the GCC. Here is the transcript. If you would like to comment and share your own feelings and needs around Partnership, Leadership, and Domination, I would enjoy that.
Peace, Jim
Assessment Round: Partnership Culture
Kirsten: I'm not so clear about what I would like to share here, because what I am facing the most is my own concern that these concepts are not clear when we talk about them. I actually would like us to try and write something...I think we once decided to try and put words on this, and so writing what we understand about leadership...And my biggest concern I believe is that we are not clear enough about the leadership we want to offer and I am missing leadership in some areas of our organization to be, the unborn organization.
Jim: I've been thinking a lot about this lately because I had a direct experience of how unconscious I can be around partnership. Kirsten, Jori and I were on a phone call recently and Kirsten and I were talking about one of the questions on our survey that affected Eva,our partner, and I made a change to one f the questions without consulting Eva and I found out later that some Eva's needs were not met by my choice. What I'm noticing about it is how unconscious I was to even consider her, as important as consideration of other members of the team is to me. In that particular moment, it didn't even cross my mind, so I really see how far I have to grow in terms of being able to expand my ability to empathize with people who are not present and so that is a source of an edge for me. I'm also noticing how I was at the receiving end in our organization about some decisions that were made that affected me that I was not consulted in and so having both experiences within a pretty brief period of time really highlights for me how important it is to grow my consciousness in that way and what I realized when I am on the receiving end is how important it is for me to dog for my own needs for clarity and connection and how I see another edge for me is to actually ask for what I want rather than to wait for other people to hopefully give it to me. I am realizing more and more the importance of making requests in order to help to bring balance to power
Jori: For me, when I consider a partnership culture, one of the things that came alive for me is the distinction between "leadership as domination" vs. "leadership as service". I use my relationship with Jim often as a model because its a field where I can connect with myself about how I am holding leadership because I appreciate leadership in terms of having direction and having initiative, and for us to be alive and vital and moving forward...creating some level of balance between us. A piece that is important to me is that we each take responsibility for our own needs. I want us all to have the freedom to move forward and I feel fairly hopeless that we will ever have enough perspective to be able to take everyone into consideration. That's where the other part of the partnership culture comes up for me... to be met on the other side, with "oh, that didn't work," and with a sense of openness to find a way now for it to work that works for all of us now that we are actually communicating. To be in a space of that openness rather than a space of coercion or my needs matter more than yours. I think it was Susan Skye, who said very early in my learning NVC something that was very precious to me, "my needs, but not at the expense of yours and your needs, not at the expense of mine.
Anne: I would like to say first that I am joining what I just heard. For me this question is really important. I would really like very much for us to give a definition of the words. When I heard for you Jori that leadership is having a direction, taking initiative and moving forward, that helps me a great deal. Otherwise, I feel that even if we use leadership rather than power over, there is still some kind of linking in my mind, thinking that the leader may be someone who takes power over from somebody else. So, even the words are carrying things that are often in my opinion unconscious - but don't help us to be fearless. So, my reflection on that is that as soon as we will have a clear definition of what we really think, it will probably help us all to relax a little bit. Something else that I wanted to say hearing Jim's example of what happened in him in relation to Eva's feedback is that it is not simple. In my mind it is not only question of becoming somebody who is using power and forgetting the other, its more related to a differentiation between individual impulse and remembering the collective around us. And for me this is a very important step we have to learn-How can we get from the individual way of thinking to the collective way of thinking? and giraffe is very helpful for that, I think. So the next thing I want to say is that for me leadership when we take turns is a very relieving way to be a leader, and I enjoy that very much now in our French-speaking part of the network, because I see that those that those who are in the important positions are there for two years usually (and they can be elected for two more years). After that usually, up to now, we have changes and those people are no longer in the same place and that is really beautiful. So I would like us to put attention on sharing power, sharing leadership.
Jim: I have a gratitude to express to Anne. How deeply affected I was in Munch when you took a leadership role and you said something about how important it was that we have pleasure in what we do with the GCC. That has been with me ever since and it has inspired me to look for the pleasure in every meeting that I have attended since...I really want to take the time to notice what I am enjoying about my connection to people in these meetings and to really underline and enjoy the relationship as well as the tasks that we are doing, so I am grateful for your inspiration in that. Kirsten: I'm just reminded of a sentence that has been with me for twenty years from a leadership training I took a long time ago, which is, "Everyone can give a lead." I'm often reminded of that and I also talk about that in my own trainings, that everyone can give a lead, and we don't need a titile to do that. And I find that such a wonderful way of saying it.
Note: Due to a traffic problems caused by an accident, Eva was delayed in arriving and chose not to comment during the meeting.